African Wildlife & Environment Issue 77 FINAL ISSUE

IN MEMORIAM

Keith receiving the WESSA Gold Medal Award at the centenary AGM in 2016 - flanked by John Green (left) and Dr Richard Lewis (right).

When I left Eshowe in 1975 to take up a position in Pretoria, the work continued under the able hand of Garth Owen-Smith. It was then that Keith led the way in establishing the Wild Life Society’s African Conservation Education (ACE) programme with Garth as its first field-officer. From ACE the Society develop a dedicated EE programme under the successive leadership first of Simeon Mlindeli Gcumisa (1976 to 1983) and then of Dr Jim Taylor (1983 to 2018) It was while Gcumisa was with WESSA that, somewhere in the mid-1970s, Keith facilitated a meeting with various influential leaders of the time. Many of these later went into exile and eventually took up leadership positions in the Mandela cabinet after 1994. Keith’s work was always ahead of its time. Once the ACE programme was up and running, he supported the government to take over the logistic costs which were too much for an NGO. ACE then became a government / civil society partnership with WESSA. In this regard it probably became one of the first conservation civil society partnerships for conservation education. In a ten-year period virtually every traditional leader in KwaZulu-Natal, including most senior Izinduna, attended a five-day conservation and ecology training course. These courses were based at Twinstreams, the farm of Dr Ian Garland and were run by WESSA’s Mduduzi Mchunu. A part of the programme included a visit to Ian Scott-Barnes’ Nyala Game Range which gave participants the chance to see how a modern farm could practice biodiversity conservation and still remain economically viable. It’s worth recording that Twinstreams became, with Keith’s support, the first Environmental Education Centre established in Africa!

Keith’s work in Pondoland and the old Transkei also lead to significant areas being conserved, and his passion for education lead the Society to initiate with Lynn Hurry the ACE (African Conservation Education) project - working closely with Simeon Gcumisa and later Dr Jim Taylor amongst many others. Keith, along with other Society stalwarts like Ian Garland and Nolly Zaloumis, built a national reputation as someone who one needed to consult with respect to most biodiversity conservation projects. Eventually he was recognised for all this work by being awarded an Honorary PhD from the University of KwaZulu Natal and theWESSA Gold Medal. Keith was indeed a remarkable person. A quiet, unassuming and strong family man with a huge work ethic and a family support system that facilitated his making great achievements. Keith Cooper and the early days of Environmental Education in South Africa - Notes from Lynn Hurry 23 June 2020 Between 1969 and 1973, while I was lecturing at the Eshowe Teachers Training College, with the support of Keith Cooper, a Director of the (then) Wildlife Society of South Africa and two Zululand environmentalists, Ian Scott-Barnes and Ian Garland I ran a number of pilot short-course Environmental Education (EE) programmes for the final year students of the College - at the Scott-Barnes’ Nyala Game Ranch and Ian Garlands Twinstreams Farm. Keith’s support was greatly encouraging of the EE work from the start and so it was easy for us to invite him to be the guest of honour at the annual prize-givings where certificates of participation and prizes for the best reports were awarded.

15 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 77 (2020)